Working Together: Integrating Computational Modeling Approaches to Investigate Complex Phenomena     

Bielik  Tom  Fonio  Ehud  Feinerman  Ofer  Duncan  Ravit Golan  Levy  Sharona T. 《Journal of Science Education and Technology》2021,30(1):40-57

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Complex systems are made up of many entities, whose interactions emerge into distinct collective patterns. Computational modeling platforms can provide...  相似文献   

Universities Conducting STEM Outreach: a Conceptual Framework     

Efrat Eilam  Stephen W. Bigger  Kirsten Sadler  Fiachra Barry  Tom Bielik 《Higher Education Quarterly》2016,70(4):419-448

This paper addresses the positioning of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) outreach programmes within universities’ operations. Though universities in many respects form a rather homogenous international community, there is wide diversity in regard to the provision of STEM outreach by different institutions. To explain this diversity, a conceptual framework was developed by using the Theory of Legitimacy as an organising concept. The framework considers two opposing scenarios that form a continuum between them, namely: ‘top‐down’ initiative by the university governance versus ‘bottom‐up’ grass‐roots initiative. Using the Theory of Legitimacy, internal and external outreach relationships are characterised and explained under the two scenarios. The framework was applied to two settings chosen due to their essential differences in outreach provision, namely, Australia and Israel. The differences that were found in internal and external legitimacy provide a useful lens for examining the low‐performing, fragile system in Australia as compared with the high‐performing, thriving system in Israel.  相似文献   

Systems,transfer, and fields: Evaluating a new approach to energy instruction     

David Fortus  Marcus Kubsch  Tom Bielik  Joseph Krajcik  Yaron Lehavi  Knut Neumann  Jeffrey Nordine  Sebastian Opitz  Israel Touitou 《科学教学研究杂志》2019,56(10):1341-1361

Energy is a central concept in science in every discipline and also an essential player in many of the issues facing people everywhere on the globe. However, studies have shown that by the end of K-12 schooling, most students do not reach the level of understanding required to be able to use energy to make sense of a wide range of phenomena. Many researchers have questioned whether the conceptual foundations of traditional approaches to energy instruction may be responsible for students' difficulties. In response to these concerns, we developed and tested a novel approach to middle school physical science energy instruction that was informed by the recommendations of the Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012a) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (NGSS Lead States, 2013). This new approach differs substantially from more traditional approaches to energy instruction in that it does not require energy forms and it emphasizes connections between energy, systems, and fields that mediate interaction-at-a-distance. We investigated student learning during this novel approach and contrasted it with student learning within a comparable unit based on a more traditional approach to energy instruction. Our findings indicate that students who learned in the new approach outperformed students who learned in the traditional approach in every quantitative and qualitative aspect considered in this study, irrespective of their prior knowledge of energy. They developed more parsimonious knowledge networks in relation to energy that focused primarily around the concept of energy transfer. This study warrants further investigation into the value of this new approach to energy instruction in both middle and high school.  相似文献